GRAINS:
Market volatility continued to surprise Wednesday, as wheat futures bore the brunt of trader selling again following Tuesday’s brief reprieve. Corn and soybean prices have found support, keeping prices steady to modestly higher as trade volume slipped ahead of Thanksgiving. Outside market influence was also mixed midway through the week with energy markets, in particular, pressuring the ag complex with crude oil down. Soybean oil resumed its downward spiral as well despite palm oil futures finding support in recent sessions to halt their selloff. South American weather also continues to hang heavily over row-crop prices as so far, many key growing areas have received coverage in the past two week and those that didn’t are slated to receive some in the next week or two, keeping any weather scare potential at arm’s length for now. March corn closed unchanged and May corn was unchanged as well. January soybeans closed up 5 1/4 cents and March soybeans were up 3 cents. March KC wheat closed down 14 1/4 cents, March Chicago wheat was down 9 1/2 cents and March Minneapolis wheat was down 9 1/4 cents.
LIVESTOCK:
There have been a few early sales in the cash cattle market which has helped the live cattle contracts as higher trade in the fed cash cattle market is always a positive sign. Although these sales have been light in their developments thus far, live sales have been marked in Kansas at $190 which is $3.00 to $4.00 higher than last week’s weighted average, and a handful of dressed sales have been marked in Nebraska at $295 which is $5.00 higher than last week’s weighted average. What was especially interesting about the sales made in Nebraska was that packers committed the cattle for delivery on the weeks of 12/2/2024, and 12/16/2024, which indicates that they’re short bought and in need of more cattle to keep up with demand. Thankfully feedlot managers were savvy to this and have jumped at the opportunity to again trade cattle higher this week. Upon seeing some early sales developing in the fed cash cattle market for higher prices, the feeder cattle complex is confidently keeping with its upward trek. With pork cutout values again lower this morning, and traders were looking forward to the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday, it comes as no major surprise that the nearby lean hog contracts traded lower. And it would also be remiss to ignore the fact that Tuesday’s surge ran most of the nearby contracts to new contract highs, which is typical then for traders to show some exhaustion as their efforts the day before were significant.
